The Chief Information Officers (CIO) cited progress in IT security and privacy, enterprise architecture, consolidating and modernizing IT infrastructure, improved PMA scores, portfolio management and governance, and data strategy/information sharing in the last few years. Challenges on the horizon include enterprise standardization and consolidation, project management, shared services, application consolidation and integration and line of business initiatives.
"Today's CIO confronts a formidable array of management and technical issues," said Paul Wohlleben, a partner with Grant Thornton's Global Public Sector, and program manager for the CIO survey project. "The good news is that as they face challenges and opportunities, they benefit from the federal marketplace reforms put in place by the Clinger-Cohen Act."
The survey registers clear appreciation among CIOs for the Clinger-Cohen reforms, including a better framework for managing IT in the federal government, elevation of the IT executive's role within agencies, and improved business processes associated with IT, resulting in better IT decisions and investments.
"We are pleased to continue this longstanding tradition of surveying the Federal CIO community," said ITAA President Robert B. Laurence, "We are gratified by the level of active engagement from our Federal Committee and, in particular, the leadership demonstrated by Grant Thornton's Public Sector in pulling this study together."
The ITAA survey is based on interviews with 39 CIOs and information resource management officials representing 29 executive, judicial and legislative branch organizations. Twenty-five respondents came from civilian agencies; 10 represented defense agencies; four work for organizations with oversight responsibility. Interviews took place between August and December of 2005.
